


First Burn, or Second Fall, or Why the 14th Century Was So Terrible

by WildnessBecomesYou



Series: Music is Not the Food of Love, but the Messenger [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a bit of a Happy Ending, Enemies to Friends, M/M, Mentions of Starvation, and back to enemies for a brief moment, lots of fire, lovers being implied but not strictly out there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 23:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19283836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildnessBecomesYou/pseuds/WildnessBecomesYou
Summary: The fourteenth century had nothing good in it. Not according to a particular demon who had, for a brief moment, been very good at his job.A certain Principality would have to agree.But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.(Inspired by First Burn (LMM) and the image of Crowley burning everything around him out of pain.)





	First Burn, or Second Fall, or Why the 14th Century Was So Terrible

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by First Burn (LMM) and the image of Crowley burning everything around him out of pain. 
> 
> If you like, you can listen to the song while reading; if you start the song in the beginning it fits neatly into two repetitions, while if you start it at the first mention of 1315 and take your time reading it lines up fairly nicely. 
> 
> Audio assistance or not, I hope you enjoy! This is my first foray into writing for the Ineffable Husbands, so of course I had to start with massive amounts of angst.

The fourteenth century had nothing good in it. Not according to a particular demon who had, for a brief moment, been very good at his job. 

A certain Principality would have to agree.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. 

It all starts in a garden, in the Garden, with a once-angel-turned-snake who is immediately smitten with an angel so good at heart to have given the first humans a light to guide them. 

It would take a few more centuries for the demon to truly Fall a second time, to be so irrevocably in love with his ‘enemy’. 

It would take until 1941 for the angel to reach a bursting point.

But he begins his Fall as the descendants of the people he saved get to murdering the Son of God. He begins to feel pricks of affection in Golgotha, 33 AD, as he feels coolness on his left shoulder and heat by his ear. He changes the name to the voice— Crowley, now, not Crawley, good, that’s a tad more dignified, shows his tendency towards sarcasm, perhaps— and glances over his shoulder at “I showed him all the kingdoms of the world.” 

Just a glance, though. Aziraphale supposed some demons weren’t all bad. And then Aziraphale had all the time in the world to mull over the demon’s words. 

“Oh, yeah, that’ll do it.”

In Rome, in the Year of Our Lord 41, he hears that voice again. He can’t help it, something lights in what he supposes is his stomach, and he realizes— he’s excited to see the demon. 

“Still a demon, then?”

While he supposes Crowley being an aardvark would be a tad funny, he did have to check. His excitement would be more acceptable if Crowley had somehow…

Unfallen. 

“I’ve never eaten an oyster!” 

Crowley seemed satisfied at Aziraphale’s slip up. The demon had invited the angel to share his jug of house brown. It had been a decent drink, though not the best he’d had. 

They did not get oysters. 

Instead, Aziraphale recieved a lightly-scorched letter in the next year. It read, in script that slithered across the page, backwards, in the traditional style,

“Tempt would have been the right word, given the aphrodisiacal qualities of the oyster.” 

It had been the first letter the angel recieved. He sent one back detailing the many health benefits of the oyster and the current rules on written language. He wrote quickly, and left to write, as the modern style dictated. 

A few years later found Aziraphale with a return letter inviting him out to lunch. A picnic, filled with fruits and cakes and tea from the local market in Helvetii. Aziraphale quite enjoyed the food, and didn’t mind the compliments from Crowley. 

He sent a thank you note. It was only polite. 

In the 60’s— the very first ones, mind you— they each sent three letters before seeing each other face to face. 

“Still a demon, then?” Aziraphale asked fondly. 

Crowley rolled his golden eyes, drawling, “Still an Angel, then, Angel?” 

Taxila had really begun to spice things up. Crowley had even smiled at the taste, something usually reserved only for sarcastic quips in Aziraphale’s direction. 

“Angel,” the next letter began. Still at the top right corner. Aziraphale blushed, then got to reminding Crowley of the rules of written language. 

In his return letter, Crowley mentioned the flowers in Gyeongju. He compared the fuzzy blooms to Aziraphale’s hair. “Oh,” Aziraphale breathed, and stacked the letter on top of all the others. 

Not that he’d been collecting them. 

When the Agreement was broached in 537, Aziraphale and Crowley had sent so many letters back and forth that it was difficult to stack them. The only logical thing to do was to begin binding them. 

Aziraphale was no stranger to books. 

They wrote of many things in their letters. The Agreement, local cuisine, culture, trips, tasks. Anything that came to mind. Even after they happened to set up home bases near each other in the year 1,000 they wrote almost every day. After all, one couldn’t be too careful about what could be overheard, but silent letters could speak the unspoken words. 

Perhaps the emphasis went unspoken, too. “My Dear Crowley,” Aziraphale wrote, when he truly meant “My Dear, Crowley,” or perhaps even “ _My_ Dear, Crowley.” 

His demon, he thought, would read between the lines. 

And this arrangement suited them. They would write to each other, perhaps set up a dinner or lunch every year— sometimes more, if they felt bold— and faithfully Aziraphale would bind each letter to the last. 

He was collecting quite the tome. 

The last dinner they’d had was in 1299. Crowley had rushed off at the end, hiding his eyes from Aziraphale, his smile dropping suddenly as he stormed away from the table. 

He’d sent an apology letter a year later, explaining his outburst away with a reference to his Head Office. Aziraphale had exhaled a 367 day inhale and gently thumped his desk with his head. 

“My Daft Boy,” he’d begun his return letter. 

But times were changing, and by 1315, neither party could stay silent. 

“Angel!” 

“Do not ‘Angel’ me,” Aziraphale sneered. It surprised Crowley, truly surprised the demon. His glasses slid down his nose as his head jerked back. 

“Angel, I don’t understand,” he said, spreading his arms out in front of him in a gesture of calm. He took a step forward. 

Aziraphale took a step backwards. “Don’t, Crowley. Don’t.” 

Crowley’s shoulders sagged. Aziraphale felt something in his chest come undone. “Is this about the rain?” 

Aziraphale’s eyes widened. “The rain—“ he sputtered— “you did this!” 

People were starving, and Crowley was asking about the rain?

“It was rain— I didn’t do— I didn’t raise the prices of bread, of meat, I didn’t horde salt away from them—“ 

“No, you just made it impossible to find when you killed every crop!” Aziraphale couldn’t believe that Crowley wasn’t seeing this. The rain was the root of this tree of famine and death, after all, the tree that would eventually be known as The Great Famine. 

Grain could not grow when a storm cloud seemed to park itself above all of Europe, raining through the entirety of spring and summer. At first, no one noticed. Bread was still plentiful. Beautiful bread, at that. It comforted you through the chill in your bones that was supposed to have left with winter. 

Crowley had even complained of the cold in his letters to Aziraphale. 

And then, come fall, there had been no grain. What little was left was brought inside and guarded jealously. There was no straw for the animals. No salt left to cure what meat any scrupulous person could find. 

No room at the inn for those who could not pay. 

And Crowley, somehow, did not follow this line of thinking. At least, he hadn’t so far. But the look on the demon’s face was changing, the eyes slipping from confusion to horror and then to anger. 

Anger, Aziraphale wanted to remind him, was a secondary emotion. He knew, because right now it was secondary to the hurt the angel currently felt. 

Crowley took another few steps forward. Aziraphale held out a hand and the demon stopped. Aziraphale turned his back on his… friend, and spotted his tome of letters.

He picked the bound pages up in his left hand, tracing the Hebrew on the first page, right to left, in the old style. 

When Crowley spoke, breaking through sputters, he sounded desperate.

“It was only rain, Aziraphale!”

Was it as desperate as the children starving? The ten shillings that prevented peasants from purchasing one thing to fill their empty bellies? 

“I don’t know who you are anymore, Crowley.” 

Aziraphale’s own voice was surprisingly steady for how much his world was crumbling around him. He rested the tome against his own shoulder as he turned to face Crowley again.

Crowley was on his knees. 

“Get up,” Aziraphale rumbled. Crowley let out a hissed plea. “Get up. I think you should leave.”

“A _zi_ raphale,” Crowley hissed again, lingering on the second syllable, “Angel, please—“

Aziraphale let the tome tumble from his hand and into a bin filled with loose trimmings and other trash. Crowley watched it go, and when it thudded to the bottom, his head dropped. 

It seemed like an eternity before Crowley stood, struggled to his feet, and exited the angel’s home. 

It took everything in Aziraphale not to chase after the demon. The sudden emptiness in his chest hurt. 

He let himself fall to his own knees, but did not let himself reach into the trash and pull out the tome. Instead, he let out a bellow, pushed himself to his feet, and knocked his desk candle into the bin. 

He let the panic and pain wash over him as his letters from his demon burned. 

He would leave Dublin in the morning. 

Across the not-yet-city, Crowley stumbled into his own home. It was sparse, save for the bed and the desk that were close enough that one did not need a chair to sit at the desk. 

He glimpsed the letter he’d been writing. 

“— it is not as if the whispers of Hell know anything of your whispers to me—“ 

He knocked the paper away. 

“Blasted—“ 

He spun around. No one to receive his rant. No one to witness his pain. He let out a truly horrid scream, just to test it. 

No one came running. No one ran screaming.

He was alone.

He remembered. 

“I am— struggling, I suppose, to— well, I don’t really know why people are praising _Heaven_ for all this rain!” 

“Angel, it’s nothing to worry over. It’s my doing anyways.” 

“I know! And I am nearly certain our— our—“ he glanced upwards. “Head Offices, I mean, know that too.” 

“Oh, _Heaven_ forbid someone whispers _you_ had something to do with it!” 

“Crowley! I’ll thank you to remove that sarcasm from your tone.” He hadn’t entirely been sarcastic. The angel was frustratingly concerned with being associated with Crowley, or any force of Evil, for how much time they spent together. 

Here, in the present— being the winter of the Year of Our Lord 1315— Crowley let out a scream. It sounded suspiciously like a command.

“Burn,” it seemed to say. 

The half-written letter obeyed. 

The thing was, in every moment where any evidence had connected Crowley and Aziraphale, Aziraphale had run screaming. 

He would always whisper back through letters. 

Crowley let out another raging cry, wordless this time. He simply opened his jaw and let it all spill out. The flames raged higher. 

Aziraphale had destroyed the letters. Aziraphale had banished Crowley. 

Strangely, this hurt more than the First Fall. He had been erased from his angel’s life, erased from this narrative. No one to witness this broken heart. No one to know just how much history the angel had thrown away. 

He goaded the flames on. 

He wouldn’t burn with it, that would have been too easy, but the scorched earth would leave a legacy behind. A legacy of love, of pain, of betrayal. 

Nothing would grow here. 

He stood back from the flames, passing through them, watching everything he had built for countless centuries going up in smoke. Thoughts of his angel came to his mind as the white smoke swirled into curls. 

“Don’t,” he rasped, “don’t.” 

He thought he’d had something. The angel had never been his. 

He turned to walk away from the burning hut. He stopped, realizing he was headed in Aziraphale’s direction. 

“I thought,” he hissed towards the angel, whether or not he was listening, “I thought you were mine.” 

Crowley turned again and slithered into the forest, welcoming the cold and dark after the heat of the flames. 

The burn settled into ash. 

Centuries later— seven centuries, to be exact— Crowley returned to Aziraphale’s bookshop in his angel’s body, taking a survey of the damage after Armageddon-That-Wasn’t. Books were back in place, with a few new editions. He nodded and strolled into Aziraphale’s back room.

There was something on his desk. 

He approached cautiously. It was an old-looking thing, though it couldn’t have been too old—

Blue script, written right to left, in the old style. 

He reached out a hand, eyes wide, and traced the Hebrew characters. 

_“Tempt would have been the right word, given the aphrodisiacal qualities of the oyster.”_

Crowley drew his hand back and blinked.

The world had been set almost, but not entirely, back to right.

Things that were broken had now been miraculously restored.

**Author's Note:**

> There really was a Great Famine that had its roots in 1315. Depending on who you believe, it either ends in 1317 or 1322. I like to think that 30 years later, Aziraphale wonders if perhaps fewer people would have died of the Black Death if the Great Famine hadn't preceded it. 
> 
> Anyways! 
> 
> I have about 18 other songs I want to use for fics-- let me know if it would be easiest to tack them on here or create separate fics!


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